


Prompt: Fevers

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [59]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Codependency, Gen, Sick Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 12:57:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6470779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Wanda is ill Pietro frets and fusses, finds food anywhere and anyway he may and does all he can to help. Wanda sighs, rests her head in her brother’s lap, and tries to sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prompt: Fevers

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt on my tumblr, readable [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/142314993535/sorry-im-not-sure-what-you-mean-by-that-lol-i-did). If you want a more in detail thing about the twins being ill, one of the chapters of [_The Dead Do Not Bury Themselves_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4494030/chapters/10217535) covers it, but if longfic isn't your thing, then there is this.

**i.**  
Despite a myriad things in their young lives that would have it otherwise, the twins are rarely ill. Pietro tends to soldier through what rare illnesses he gets, and comes out perfectly well the other side, but Wanda…

When Wanda is ill it is frightful.

 

* * *

 

 **ii.  
** Wanda does not find it so frightful, really. Oh she hates being ill - _Who,_  she thinks wryly _, doesn’t?_  - but she can endure it easily enough, knows when to rest and how much to. It is Pietro who worries most of all ( _most likely,_ Wanda thinks, _due to the fever she had had when she was six that had worried even Mutti and Vati_ ) and so hovers.

She knows _why_  he does, of course. She has known since they were small instinctively, and since they were ten more certainly. They are twins, with only each other for company, and she knows Pietro has a vastly greater investment in her wellbeing than in his own.

(she knows, when she truly cares to think on it, that Pietro depends on her to a far more worrying degree than she does he)

(she is so careful, with that knowledge, to never let him be hurt because of it. She will not die, knowing it means his too.)

When Wanda is ill Pietro frets and fusses, finds food anywhere and anyway he may and does all he can to help. Wanda sighs, rests her head in her brother’s lap, and tries to sleep.

 

* * *

 

 **iii.**  
At the castle it was awful. They were not _ill_  precisely, as the energy of the sceptre and the serum they had been given wormed their way through muscles and veins, through blood and bone and into every cell, unlocking the secrets of their DNA, but they were not well, and though near each other they were not supposed to touch.

Pietro ached to comb his fingers through Wanda’s hair and soothe away the fever-nightmares he knew she must be having.

(When night came, and the guards dozed, he did. The frown on Wanda’s brow smoothed out, and at last they both relaxed.)

 

* * *

 

 **iv.**  
With the Avengers it is different. When one of them is ill they get hurried to the doctors, get given medicine and told to rest. 

(Pietro never does)

(Wanda listens and rests and Pietro sits by her and sings old lullabies)

(He can’t sing at all, but it’s the thought that counts)

 

* * *

 

 **v.**    
Pietro is, he knows, as bad when Wanda is ill as he is when she is injured. He knows why - and that most of the team doesn’t understand at all - but he isn’t going to stop anytime soon, because this is how he and Wanda have always been and will always be until Wanda decides that it is better if they are otherwise.

(This is, he knows, an incredibly remote possibility)

He doesn’t have Wanda’s skill with minds (doesn’t _need_  Wanda’s skill with minds for this) but he can see how they do not like it, how they think it dangerous.

(He knows Wanda thinks the same, on occasion, and buries it in the crypt-foundations of her mind)

(She has not yet decided they should be otherwise and better)

It may be dangerous, Pietro acknowledges, and certainly the dangerous reasons are why he worries so when Wanda is hurt or is ill. Because losing her means he loses his purpose. Losing Wanda means he has _failed_  in his purpose.

(Protect, protect, ever and always protect)

So when Wanda is ill he sits with her and sings (monotone-drones) to her, and keeps her company.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are, as always, much appreciated!
> 
> And for those of you who only follow the Oneshots Series, I'd like to inform you all of my new 3 chapter fic on the twins, [_And when the stars threw down their spears_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6462742), for those of you interested in something a little bit longer. It's quite different to a lot of the prompts here, but it has links to the Oneshot [_For me, my love_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6270190). 
> 
> To know what other longfics I've done, please see either my Works page or just go to the summary of this series; it gives a list of my Maximoff longfics. As I plan to do several other multichapter Maximoff twins fics keeping an eye on that may be wise if you think you're interested in other such longer fics.


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